


An (Un)expected Meeting

by timeladyleo



Series: Thirteen and Sarah Jane [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: DWFicExchange, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-17 22:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19964215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeladyleo/pseuds/timeladyleo
Summary: Sarah Jane gets some suspicious emails and decides to go and investigate. What she's not expecting is who else is there snooping about.





	An (Un)expected Meeting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hetzi_clutch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetzi_clutch/gifts).



> This is absolutely a rip off of School Reunion, and is completely self-indulgent, and did end up getting a tiny bit out of hand. Nevertheless, I hope I managed to balance self-indulgence with Tardis Team antics, so I hope you enjoy!

Really, it had been Luke’s idea to go. She called Luke at uni as often as she thought he’d let her. Who wants to look like their mum calls them every day? But she missed him so much and she was glad that he never seemed reluctant to talk to her. He told her about his new friends, and his course, and the mischief he got into. The desire for adventure hadn’t left him and he told Sarah Jane about all the creatures he encountered.

She just hoped that if he ever had any real problems, he would still want to tell her.

It was during one of these calls that she brought up Aqua Laboratories. An email had put her on their trail, advertising their research into ‘the cure for all ills’. This was always suspicious, and Sarah Jane had found herself googling it straight away. She had ended up on their website, an impeccably neat thing which looked great until you read all the gibberish on their ‘what we do’ tab. Maybe they didn’t expect anyone to get that far. Or maybe they did. 

Regardless of their intentions, Sarah Jane was not the sort of person who let that sort of thing go unchecked. And Luke had all but insisted that she go, so what else was she meant to do? 

It was January and a biting light drizzle had set in over London, that kind of rain that didn’t look like much but soaked you to the bone if you weren’t careful and pierced you with cold. Sarah Jane hadn’t particularly considered this when she’d got into the car, though when she got out again, she really wished that she had. The whole trip had been pretty spontaneous. An email had pinged into her inbox, telling her all about this open day at Aqua, where they would open the lab for anyone to see. 

The issue was, the email arrived around an hour before they were meant to open. 

Without thinking too hard, Sarah Jane had set off. This was too good an opportunity to miss. It was never this easy to go and snoop about! Usually, she had to make appointments and pull the ‘I’m a top journalist’ card. If anything, this was too easy. She’d always been paranoid, and this was almost definitely a trap, but if she was being invited to nose around, then springing the trap would make stopping whoever was setting her up easier. 

She pulled up, just over an hour later, in front of a building that was as grey as the sky. For a moment, she sat in the car, listening to the rain pelt the roof and trying to see the fastest route into the building. That looked like a door there, but she couldn’t quite decide if it was open. She decided to take her chances. 

All the laws of the universe dictated that, of course, it was locked shut. She rattled the handle a few times, peering in through the darkened glass. There appeared to be some figures moving in the distance. Now her heart was racing with the thrill and terror of the risk of being caught. She put her hand in her pocket, frowning to find it empty. She tried the other one and swore gently to herself. How could she have left the sonic lipstick in the car? 

She glanced to the car, assessing her options. She was soaked now anyway, so another trip through the rain wouldn’t hurt. Before she could make a dash back, however, the door opened. A young woman smiled at her. “Miss Smith?”

Sarah Jane’s frown deepened. “How do you know me?”

“Your reputation precedes you. My mum was a fan of your tv show, years ago.” Sarah opened her mouth to try and deny any attachment to Planet Three, but she wasn’t given chance. “Anyway, look at me rambling! Come in, we’ve been expecting you.”

Sarah Jane left the question ‘who exactly is we?’ unspoken. She had a feeling she was about to find out.

The building was about what you’d expect, long corridors and doors with frosted glass. The rooms beyond looked, as far as Sarah Jane could tell, large and white, and largely uninhabited. There was definitely something off about this place. Everything about it felt too clean, as though someone were trying to make you think there were people busy doing experiments, but had forgotten the most crucial part of that equation – the people. 

They walked to a lift. The young woman pressed the button for the fifth floor, and up they went. Sarah Jane was suspicious of being trapped in small places with no escape, and lifts always felt a little bit too much like something bad was going to happen. Still, it was as good a place as any to begin an investigation. She put her metaphorical journalist hat on and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Yasmin Khan. Yaz. I’m security.” 

“And we’re going to…?”

“Sorry, we’re going upstairs to the office of the head scientist. She’s looking forward to meeting you.” 

Sarah Jane frowned. They weren’t even trying to hide that this was a set up? “I see,” she said, trying to decide if this Yaz was double-crossing her. Or maybe just regular crossing  
her. It was so frustrating to be missing the pieces she needed to make this make sense. She tried, “Are you expecting a lot of visitors to your open day?” 

This threw Yaz, unable to hide the confusion and panic in her eyes. Now, at last, this was something that Sarah Jane could work with. She knew the face of someone who had forgotten their cover story when she saw one. She continued conversationally “Only there didn’t seem to be many cars outside.”  
The lift dinged, opening its doors. Yaz set off without a word and Sarah Jane followed, determined not to lose her thread. “In fact, there hardly seems to be anyone in this building at all, which certainly strikes me as odd for a scientific facility.” 

They reached a door, in front of which stood a young man. He exchanged a glance with Yaz, one which they seemed to think Sarah Jane couldn’t see, one that said ‘she’s asking too many questions, help!’ Out loud, Yaz said “I’m afraid I don’t know anything, Miss Smith, but the person who can tell you anything you want to know is just through here.” The young man opened the door and they both gestured for Sarah Jane to go first. 

The first thing anyone would notice in the room was the enormous office chair, in which a woman entirely too small for it lounged. A man was stood next to her, making a face as though he were desperate to say something. The woman jumped up when Sarah Jane entered, beaming. “Sarah Jane! I’m so glad you came!”

Sarah Jane forced herself to smile. Why couldn’t she put her finger on what was wrong with this situation? Her instincts were all over the place, knowing this was the sort of place she should get away from fast, but her gut feeling telling her she could trust this woman. She held out her hand. “You are?” 

The woman shook her hand, still smiling warmly. “Doctor… Jane… Smith. And this is Graham. I’m the head scientist here, doing… science. We’re pleased to welcome you here.” 

For people trying to hide their identities, the four of them were doing a remarkably bad job. Sarah Jane had rarely seen worse pretences in all her life. She’d done better on the spot in a panic. “It says on your website,” Sarah Jane opened her notebook, “You’re ‘close to achieving the ‘cure for all ills’’. This feels like quite a remarkable claim to me, so I’m very interested in how exactly you’re researching the cure for everything. It’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?”

Doctor Smith kept making faces at Graham, variations of winks and raised eyebrows signifying secret plans and hidden codes. At least they weren’t being subtle about being up to something, Sarah Jane thought. Something was very weird here. 

There was a long pause while Graham and Doctor Smith continued to make faces at each other as if Sarah Jane were not in the room. Sarah folded her arms. As if remembering they weren’t alone and that a question had been asked, Doctor Smith grinned at her again and said, “Yes, well, it does rather, doesn’t it? I suggest that Ryan,” which was paired with a pointed look at Ryan, “takes you on a little tour around the lab, and then you can get an idea of what’s going on here.” 

The way she intoned some of the words made Sarah Jane think there might be a joke going on here that she had missed. There was a puzzle here that she was determined to solve. “I think that would be a good idea,” she said, giving Ryan a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

Ryan sighed, opening the door. “This way, Miss Smith.” Sarah Jane looked back at Doctor Smith once more as she left, then the door was shut behind her and she was being led on through the corridors. As they turned the corner, Sarah Jane could have sworn she’d heard raised voices from behind them.

\----

“You are aware, Doc, that she had no idea who we were, aren’t you?” Graham leaned on the desk and raised his eyebrow. The Doctor’s mouth dropped open as though she had been mortally offended. 

“Of course she did! She’s just under cover, Graham. She’s a journalist, she’s just acting.” 

Graham stared evenly at her. “And honestly, Jane Smith? That’s just her name!” 

The Doctor threw her arms in the air, exasperated. “I was panicking! I forgot to think of a cover name, and then…” Her mouth dropped open again as she spread her hands over her face as though checking it was still there. “Oh no… I regenerated again, she hasn’t seen this face yet.” 

Graham huffed triumphantly. The Doctor paced in front of the desk a few times, her eyebrows knotted into a deep frown as various options for what to do next shouted for attention in her mind. Emailing Sarah had been a stroke of genius, so she’d thought. She’d even gone back to last week to post some leaflets through the doors of Bannerman Road. It had been a perfect plan. Would have been. How could she have overlooked such an important detail, as if she’d forgotten that humans kept the same face for their whole lives?

“You’ll have to tell her, you know.” Graham cut through all seven of her ideas, arms folded. 

“I know.” The Doctor slumped back into the chair with a dramatic flourish. The movement gave the chair enough momentum to make it start swivelling away from Graham, slowly. 

“You’ll have to tell her soon, you know. I think she probably suspects that we’re the bad guys now.”

“I know!” Her legs were slightly too short to reach the floor. Using the very tips of her toes, she kicked the floor frantically to swivel back to face Graham. She missed being tall. 

Graham did not look impressed. “I think this might be one of those times where you might have to explain some missing details, Doc. I thought you said she was one of your best friends?”

“No, she is, she just didn’t recognise me properly.” Graham’s confused squint deepened. “I used to have a different- well, when I first met Sarah, it was, oh, ten or so bodies ago.” Graham began to comment and the Doctor quickly interrupted, “You know how I told you about regeneration?”

The Doctor remembered explaining it a while ago. 

Graham remembered sitting there for a long time as she bombarded them with information, trying to get them to wrap their heads around the fact that she was effectively immortal, could and had physically transformed her body a dozen or so times, and was probably 2000-odd years old. It was just what Time Lords did, you see. It had all been a little bit much for Graham. 

“Yup,” he said, without conviction. 

“Well, last time I saw Sarah, I had a different face. And I looked like a man.” Graham closed his eyes for a long second as the Doctor rambled about her previous forms. He had, now, finally, sort of gotten used to the idea, but imagining their Doctor in any other body was difficult at best. “But I never told her I regenerated. And I was so sure she was just being amazing at being under cover.”

She jumped up to her feet again before Graham could formulate any sort of response. “Come on!” she said as she strode towards the door. 

“Wait a sec, Doc. Have you thought at all about what you’re going to say other than ‘Hi Sarah Jane, by the way, I’m actually your time-travelling best friend, surprise!’ You don’t think that might be a little bit startling?” 

The Doctor paused midstride. Every other time she’d met Sarah, it had seemed to go okay. “What’s your idea then, Graham?”

Graham’s mouth opened again as he scrambled around his mind looking for an idea. “Oh, I know. Is there any way we can have her stumble across the Tardis by accident…?” 

\---

Whatever it was that Yaz and Ryan were pretending to be, they were doing a terrible job at being consistent with it. As far as Sarah Jane could tell, they were either security or menial lab workers, but definitely both clueless as to what they were actually supposed to be doing. Whoever was in charge of them had done an awful job of briefing them. 

“It’s just… this… way,” said Ryan, plastering a fake smile beneath his uncertain eyes and making a panicked, not-so-subtle gesture to Yaz. She looked just as panicked. 

“Yep, the main lab is, uh, just around this corner.” Yaz’s smile was a mirror of Ryan’s. In a way, Sarah Jane felt sorry for them. It wasn’t easy being thrown into the playing field and  
having to improvise, and they clearly didn’t have a lot of practice. 

“So the lab we just saw was…?” Sarah Jane raised an eyebrow. They’d walked past an almost countless number of rooms now in search for this ‘main’ lab. Sarah Jane wasn’t sure how the main lab was any different to the other three they’d been in, except being more elusive. The strangest thing of all was how empty the whole place was. 

Yaz and Ryan shared another look. There was a long hesitation, until, eventually, Ryan said, weakly, “Backups?”

Before Sarah Jane could even think of a good retort, Yaz dashed forward to open a big, metal door. It was the sort of door that looked like it should be guarding something important, or hiding something horrible. “Here it is!” 

Every single thing about this situation was shouting _it’s a trap!_ Sarah Jane wasn’t liking the idea of going in very much at all. She’d had too many nightmares about doors like this, and whatever evil tended to lie beyond them. 

Yaz gestured to the door insistently. Sarah Jane tried to peer in, but there seemed to be nothing but an average looking lab in there. She squared herself, and strode in. It wasn’t very exciting after all, a few rows of desks with assorted test-tubes and complicated-looking instruments adorning them. In fact, it looked just like a lab would look if the person making it had only ever seen a film set of a lab. Sarah Jane had been in many labs before, and none of them had been this pristine, or had the blueish mood lighting. 

And there were still no people, anywhere. 

The door clicked shut and Yaz and Ryan followed her in. She turned on her heels to face them. Both of them were stood awkwardly, as though they were waiting for something to happen. Sarah Jane was starting to get the nagging sense that she was missing something. 

“Right, I’ve had about as much of this as I can handle. What is going on here? And please, don’t even think about lying, because not only are you some of the worst liars I have ever met, but it is perfectly clear to me that this is no more a real lab than you are real security guards, or technicians, or whatever it actually is you’re pretending to be.” 

They looked at her, startled. Yaz frowned, almost seeming offended, and Ryan put his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground. “Well?” demanded Sarah Jane, folding her arms.  
Ryan looked at Yaz, appealing to her silently, and her response was an expression that said ‘I don’t know what to say either!’ and Ryan did some more unsubtle gesturing towards Sarah Jane that was saying ‘say something!’ Sarah Jane watched this whole exchange unimpressed. 

Eventually, Yaz turned to her with a forced smile. “You’re right! We’re not really scientists. It’s just that – well, you see, we thought you were here to help us find out what’s going on here, and you’re right, it’s completely bizarre! And she said you might be undercover, and she said you were good, which by the way, your acting is incredible, and she said that you dealt with this sort of thing all the time and-”

“Who exactly told you all of this?” Sarah Jane would later regret snapping, but in that moment, they seemed to know far too much about her, and the cold hands of her paranoia gripped her. 

Yaz and Ryan exchanged another confused look, and said, together, “The Doctor.”

Sarah Jane’s heart stopped for a split-second. “The Doctor! He’s here? He’s regenerated again, I suppose?”

“Oh, my God, you didn’t know? She sent you all that stuff about Aqua in the post! I bet she forgot to sign anything with her name.” Yaz’s hands drew circles in the air as she began to piece it together. 

“She-? You mean _that_ woman was…!” The two nodded. Sarah Jane blinked, trying to process all this new information. The regeneration thing didn’t really bother her, not any more, but why had the stupid Time Lord not just introduced herself outright? If anything, that convinced Sarah Jane that what Yaz and Ryan were saying was true. Only the Doctor was dumb enough to organise something this chaotically. 

“Let’s go and find her, maybe then she’ll explain everything properly,” said Ryan. At least these new companions looked as confused as she felt, Sarah Jane thought. It all made sense now, the odd emails and the leaflets, and the way that everyone looked like they were expecting her. Because they had been. 

Together, they wandered back off to find the Doctor. 

\---

As is so often the way when two groups of people are looking for each other, the four humans and Time Lord roamed around the building for no less than half an hour, missing each other by seconds, shutting doors and turning corners. In the end, they met more or less where they’d started, by the office that the Doctor had commandeered to be her own. 

The Doctor and Graham had bickered for a while, Graham suggesting multiple different plans, including but not limited to going back in time and remembering to sign the emails properly. This, the Doctor had argued, would have been totally impractical and probably quite dangerous, what with the whole crossing-one’s-own-time-stream thing. Eventually, they had settled on the idea of just finding the others and admitting what had happened outright. 

By the time Yaz, Ryan, and Sarah Jane had wandered their way back through the building, they had laughed at the Doctor’s expense several times. Yaz and Ryan had explained what the Doctor’s plan had been, then they had shared stories about other plans the Doctor had had that had actually turned out to be disastrous. Sarah Jane had witnessed many. She decided that she was quite fond of these two, in fact. 

It was Graham who spotted the others first. The office was at the end of a corridor, which had another corridor at the other end running perpendicular to it. The Doctor and Graham were just about to enter the office when Graham had the sense to turn back and see his grandson come into view. “Doctor! It’s them!”

The Doctor wheeled around as the others stopped dead in their tracks. There was a moment where they all just started at each other, as though surprised to have finally met. And then they were moving down the corridor as though they might lose one another again, meeting in the middle. 

“Sarah!” The Doctor said, beaming. 

“Doctor,” Sarah Jane said. She had told herself she was going to be cross at the Doctor for messing her around, but she couldn’t contain her smile at seeing her old friend for who she really was. 

“It’s me!” the Doctor said, her mind still on the script she had pre-produced for this exchange. 

“I know.”

“I’m the- wait, you know?”

“Yes. Why didn’t you tell me, you buffoon?”

“I thought I _had_! I thought you were just doing a really, really good undercover act!” 

Sarah Jane burst into laughter. She had so planned to be cross! But the Doctor was such an idiot, as they had always been, that it was proving hard not to forgive her. The Doctor smiled broadly and went in for a hug. 

“I don’t like your new height,” said Sarah Jane, remembering the giant of a man she had travelled with, years ago. The Doctor’s present self was tiny in comparison. 

“Believe me, I’m not a fan either. Or rather, I’m not a fan of how tall I used to be. Everything in the Tardis is on such a high shelf! Why did I put things where I can’t reach?” 

“She’s dead serious, Sarah Jane. You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff she calls me in to get because she can’t reach any more,” Graham cut in, raising his eyebrows at the Doctor, who grinned sheepishly. Yaz and Ryan nodded in the background. 

“You’re lucky that she’s not making you crawl through ventilation shafts just because you’re small.” Sarah Jane said. Yaz chuckled darkly at that one, remembering the handful of times that had happened to her.

“Hey! It didn’t happen _that_ often!” The Doctor was doing her best to look put out. Sarah Jane just raised an eyebrow. From the looks on her new friends’ faces, they too had had their fair share of tight spaces and close escapes. That was just what life with the Doctor was like. 

“I can think of at least half a dozen off the top of my head, but you’re right. That hardly ever happened compared to being possessed.” The others nodded emphatically in agreement.

The Doctor was starting to feel like she was losing control of the situation. That was the problem with old friends meeting new ones, they always compared notes about the scrapes they got into. And none of them ever seemed to give her credit for getting them all out safely again! It was all complaining about bad driving and narrow places and being covered in goo. Did none of them consider that she wasn’t fond of being held to ransom either? 

“Why don’t we go into my office, now we’re all on the same page, and we’ll make a plan. As nice as this catch up is, there is still the imminent threat of the Momogam invasion of Earth looming, and I for one would quite like to sort it out.”

\---

By sorting out a plan, what the Doctor had meant, of course, was ‘I’ve thought of a plan, now listen to it and agree that it was clever’. Whether or not it actually was clever was debatable, but everything about it was thoroughly Doctor. 

They had spent the last half hour dashing about the building setting things up for when this Momogam finally turned up. By the Doctor’s calculations and special inside knowledge (she’d overheard it from some Judoon the other day, who themselves had heard it from a Sontaran who had passed by Earth some time in the last hundred years), the Momogam was going to arrive at three o’clock that afternoon. 

Sarah Jane assumed that was code for any time at all that afternoon. 

The Doctor had worked out this elaborate scheme which basically boiled down to the fact that she was going to meet the Momogam head on and try and talk it out of whatever its dastardly plans were. In the likely case that that would fail, she’d had them all firstly wait for ages while she knocked up some too-complicated-to-explain contraption that was going to boil all their ‘science’, or something to that effect. 

As it turned out, they were in fact mass producing this substance that looked to everyone else not too dissimilar to cod liver oil pills that were going to be marketed as the ultimate health fad, but were in fact tricking humans into ingesting Momogam hormones which would either turn the planet into a slave race, or make them obedient enough not to protest a genocide. It wasn’t entirely clear which. What was clear was that this needed to be stopped. 

“You good there, SJ?” Graham asked, standing up and brushing his hands together as he laid his final piece of the trap. 

“Don’t call me SJ,” Sarah said, trying not to sound too snappy about it. Nicknames seemed to be something Graham did without thinking – he was about the only person she knew who managed to get away with calling the Doctor ‘Doc’. “I think this is just about sorted.”

She got to her feet, trying to suppress a grunt as her joints complained. Running around with the Doctor was all very well, but it was definitely easier when you were young. It was so unfair that the Doctor never had to have joint pain, or need a minute to catch her breath after running up the stairs! Then again, regeneration didn’t exactly look fun. 

Graham smiled at her. “Too many stairs today, huh?” 

Sarah Jane scoffed in amusement. “These young people don’t know how lucky they are. Come on, let’s go and meet them.” 

\--- 

The Doctor was pacing back and forth in the atrium, glancing occasionally out of the huge, glass double doors that marked the main entrance. She was muttering to herself, half thinking about what to say to confront the Momogam, and half rambling about whatever decided to cross her mind. 

“Doctor!” Sarah called out, breaking her thoughts midstride. 

“Sarah! Graham! Did you finish placing the sonic traps?” 

“Just like you told us to, Doc.”

“Brilliant. Have you seen Ryan or Yaz?” 

“We’re here, Doctor,” Yaz half-ran up to them, beaming at the Doctor. “What do you want us to do now?” 

As the Doctor waffled on about the Momogam, having gotten them time it was arriving inevitably wrong, Sarah Jane found herself watching Yaz. Her expression was all too familiar to Sarah Jane - she’d looked at the Doctor like that too, once, with such awe and adoration. She only hoped the Doctor didn’t break Yaz’s heart like the Doctor had broken hers all those years ago. 

The sound of some description of spaceship silenced the Doctor. “They’re here,” she said, her face growing grave and distant. She turned to the door, waiting as the Momogam slid into sight. 

It was taller than the doors, and almost as wide, a vast globular being that was either sliding or crawling on tendrils that looked like a mass of snakes writhing beneath its burnt orange body. It didn’t look slimy though, its body covered in what appeared to be a fine layer of fuzzy hair. That was something, at least, Sarah Jane thought. The slimy ones always managed to cover you in some sort of grossness. This looked more like, if you poked it, it would have the consistency of a mochi ball. Not that anyone would have wanted to touch it at all. It looked angry. 

“Momogam, go home,” the Doctor drew herself tall and took a couple of paces forward. 

The Momogam gargled what was, at best guess, a laugh. Its voice was oddly melodic, several tones merging in and out of each other, speaking as though through a mouthful of yoghurt. “No, _you_ go home, Doctor.”

Sarah Jane winced. She had no idea how much the Doctor’s new friends knew about Gallifrey, but that was possibly the worst opening the Momogam could have chosen. 

The Doctor had her back to her friends, which was no accident. She was trying to be better, kinder in this regeneration, trying to hide her darker side from her new friends. Her eyes hardened with her frown as she stared up at the Momogam. It was hard to tell where exactly its eyes were, what with them being so small. The Momogam mostly navigated through smelling things with its tentacles, so developing real eyes hadn’t been high up on its evolutionary agenda. 

“I am home, thank you very much. But you are trespassing, and I’ll have you know that we’ll have none of that here. The Earth is under my protection, and humanity won’t be enslaved by you.”

The Momogam gurgled a laugh again. “We are not interested in your pets, Doctor. It is this world we want, and you cannot stop us. We know what you do, you and your playthings. We have witnessed you enough to know you are nothing more than a trickster.” The Momogam lurched forward, pushing the Doctor to the floor with a tendril. It wobbled down to look at her friends. 

“Look at them, they have no idea what destruction you cause! Oh, Doctor, we _shall_ have fun with this planet.” The Momogam extended its tendrils towards Graham and Yaz, its whole body inflating a little as it heaved in a breath. “The delicious smell of fear! We will ingest these ones first, Doctor! Tell us, how does that make you _feel_?” 

The Doctor, having regained a little of her composure and scrambled back to her feet, tried to put herself between it and her friends again. The Momogam reached out its tendrils, grabbing all five of them, lifting the Doctor’s friends into the air. Sarah Jane decided that she preferred slime after all because the fuzz felt like being held by an evil peach. At least with slime you knew you were free once you were covered in it. 

“Which one do you want us to ingest first, Doctor? Perhaps the young, pretty one?” It brought Yaz towards its mouth, breathing in again. Yaz bit her lip to hold back a squeal. “Or one of the old ones? I can _smell_ such fondness for this one!” Sarah Jane strained to be as far away from the Momogam’s mouth as possible. For one thing, its breath stank. 

“I really hope you’ve got a plan, Doctor!” yelled Yaz, looking equally as displeased at the idea of being eaten. 

“Yes, Doctor! What’s your _plan_? We wish to laugh again!” 

“Take us to the lab, and I’ll show you.” 

“Fool, Doctor! You think we would so easily crawl into one of your pathetic traps?” 

The Doctor shrugged as best as she could. “Of course not, you’re not stupid. But neither am I, which is why I just need to do this,” she writhed around a little until the top of her sonic could be seen for effect. “And all your humanity-enslaving plans will be toast! Wait, no! I was going to say, _in hot water_!”

The sonic buzzed and the Momogam wailed, a gurgling cry as though it was screaming through custard. It dropped the Doctor’s friends to the floor with a thump. Fortunately, they hadn’t been high enough to break anything, but there were definitely going to be bruises later. It hadn’t let go of the Doctor though, bringing her closer to its eyes so it could stare poisonously at her. “What have you done?” it roared, tightening its grip around her. She grimaced in pain. 

“Let her go, you big… fuzzball!” yelled Ryan, wincing as he stood up. The Momogam just laughed. 

“They can’t save you now, Doctor. You think that is the only lab we could create? You think you have stopped us? We will have this planet!” 

“I’m going to give you one last chance to change your mind on that one, or else I really am going to have to stop you, and believe me when I say you really won’t like how that one ends.” 

“More meaningless _words_!” It wobbled down to look at the Doctor’s friends with its eyes as well as wiggling its tendrils, its mouth contorting into a wicked kind of grin. 

“This is your hero, _humans_! Watch how she _dies_!” 

Sarah Jane had probably mistaken the Doctor for being dead well over a dozen times while they’d travelled together, but that had never made the fear that it was for real any less. She reached into her pocket to make sure the device she had been given earlier was still there. It was, thank goodness. The others were doing the same. They glanced at each other and nodded, smiling grimly. 

As the Momogam tightened its grip on the Doctor, she bellowed “Now!” This was all the encouragement any of them needed, throwing their devices at the Momogam, who laughed. It hadn’t understood, yet, and by the time it did, it would be too late. 

The sonic began to buzz. “Run!” yelled the Doctor. 

“We’re not going without you, Doctor!” Yaz cried. 

“I’ve got a plan! Go!” They hesitated for another few seconds. The Momogam’s burbling had changed tone, no longer the laugh of the villain who thought it had won. It sounded more like the rumblings of a kettle now. 

Then it began to shake, and as the noise of the sonic increased, it began to gurgle unhappily. A violent shake overtook it and it dropped the Doctor, who landed on the floor with a hard thump. She scrambled to her feet, looked up at the Momogam, then to her friends and said “Seriously, we should get out of here.” 

This time, they didn’t argue. And just as they made it out across the car park, because the Doctor insisted that they get away from the building, the whole place exploded. 

“And that’s the downside of being a mainly liquid-based species,” said the Doctor as if that was an adequate conclusion. 

“Doctor, you’re aware that we’re mainly liquid-based too, aren’t you?” Sarah Jane said. Graham nodded in agreement. 

“Yeah, obviously, but you’re just _water_. I’d have to vibrate you loads harder to get you to boil.” The Doctor smiled, not quite realising what exactly she’d said. Yaz spluttered something unintelligible. 

“Ignoring how weird that sounds, you _boiled_... whatever that was? That’s horrible,” Ryan said, his eyebrows furrowing at the thought. Sarah Jane was trying not to remember the Slitheen she’d blown up that one time. At least this hadn’t covered them all in goo like that had. Small mercies.

The Doctor made a complicated series of expressions with her face that basically boiled down to an apology. “It was the only way I could think to stop it. I’ve met Momogam a couple of times before, and they’re pretty ruthless. And I think they might have a grudge against me.” 

“You think?” said Graham, raising an eyebrow. Then his face softened into a gentle smile, and he said “The good news is, we’re all alive and we saved the world. All in all, a good day’s work I’d say.”

\---

“Are you sure you won’t come with us, Sarah?” The Doctor said as the Tardis landed. As though echoing her Time Lord’s request, the Tardis _vworped_. 

“I’m sorry, Doctor. I’ve got a life here, it won’t look after itself! And don’t even think about reminding me that we could be back here in a minute, remember, I’ve seen your driving.” The Doctor pressed her lips together as if to restrain whatever she had been about to say. 

Graham stepped forward, cleared his throat quietly, then said “It’s been lovely to meet you, Sarah. It’s nice to know the Doc’s always had such good friends.” 

“It’s nice to know she’s got such good people looking after her now,” said Sarah Jane, smiling herself. Graham gave Ryan and Yaz a look to say ‘let’s give them a moment’. 

Both Yaz and Ryan hugged Sarah Jane. “Will we see you again?” asked Yaz. 

“Oh, I should hope so,” said Sarah Jane. These two were barely older than Luke and Clyde, so young to be fighting all the dangers and seeing all the wonders of space and time. She just hoped the Doctor didn’t damage them too badly. Travelling with the Doctor wonderful, but she was like fire, warm and beautiful and just as dangerous. 

And then they were alone in the console room. If she closed her eyes and let the hum of the Tardis carry her away, Sarah Jane could almost believe that nothing had changed. Almost. She smiled at the Doctor. “Look after them, Doctor.” 

The Doctor nodded, understanding that what Sarah really meant was ‘try not to break them too hard’. “One trip?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. 

“Ask me again some time. You know where I live, and you’re always welcome,” Sarah Jane said, though as she was saying it, she really hoped that the Tardis had got it right, and it was in fact Bannerman Road they had landed on. The Doctor didn’t have the best track record for dropping her off, after all. 

Again, the Doctor nodded. There was a pause, then the Doctor’s smile grew less sad as she swept her old friend into another hug. Sarah Jane wished that this moment could last longer, of course she did, but she was less afraid that the Doctor was never coming back now, and less alone once she stepped out of those doors. 

“I’ll see you round, Sarah Jane,” said the Doctor, finally letting her go. 

“I’m expecting it,” said Sarah Jane, smiling as she turned to leave at last. There it was, her house on the corner, exactly the way she’d left it. She didn’t question how her car had returned itself to the drive. The Doctor’s driving licence was definitely at least forty years out of date, for one thing. 

She watched as the Tardis faded away, waving even though no-one could see, then, once the groan of the engines had faded into the ambient noise of cars in the distance, she turned and walked home.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr, where I'm [sircarolyn](http://sircarolyn.tumblr.com)!


End file.
